


Warm-Blooded

by waspabi



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2475392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspabi/pseuds/waspabi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The men who follow Harry around London and Los Angeles with a fly cloud of black cameras have all kinds of daemons: ratty hyenas with hinged jaws and callous-skinned crocodiles, swift kites and glistening spotted frogs, forest green scorpions that cling to their shirts and yellow-eyed fish in portable tanks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warm-Blooded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nylandeer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nylandeer/gifts).



> This story takes place in an alternate universe based on Philip Pullman’s _His Dark Materials_ series. You don’t need to read the trilogy to understand it, but this [daemon primer](http://foxxcub.livejournal.com/405341.html) may come in handy.

Harry and his daemon float belly-up in the pool, watching white wisps of clouds blow through the brilliantly blue Los Angeles sky. 

“I just don’t like it,” Harry says, blowing a bit of water up so it falls like slightly spitty rain onto his chin. It’s gross, but it makes him feel better. “I don’t want people to take pictures of you. I don’t mind when it’s me, but I don’t want them to take pictures of you.” 

Seda floats towards him so that her wet fur brushes against his arm. “You didn’t used to mind. You didn’t mind on X-Factor.” 

Harry sinks underwater so he doesn’t have to look his daemon in the face. No, he didn’t mind on X-Factor. He remembers preening when people complimented the different shapes Seda would take and laughing as she’d show off in front of the cameramen. She’d flit through forms all day: the songbird when they practised; the hare when he was nervous before performance; big cats when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself; a colourful gradient snake to twine around Zayn’s daemon or a funny, dextrous raccoon to dig through cupboards with Louis’s. The camera loved them, and they loved it right back. 

Harry stays under long enough to run out of bubbles and then plunges back to the surface, shaking water from his hair like a dog. Seda’s gone back to swimming. Harry watches the way her long body darts and circles, so graceful underwater that it’s hard to remember how she dawdles on land. 

“Maybe we should go back home,” Seda says when she surfaces. 

Harry closes his eyes and turns his face up so the sun beats bright white spots onto his eyelids. “We are home,” he says, even though he’s not sure of that, not really. He knows he doesn’t want to go back to London yet. He’s not ready. 

Seda looks at him with her big eyes. “I want to go home soon. I miss our family. And I miss Nick. I miss Pox.”  

Normally Harry likes how his daemon just comes out and says things, straightforward and easy, but when he thinks about London he thinks about what the airport had been like last month and how the paparazzi had pressed close to the windows of his and Nick’s cab in Shoreditch and about seeing those pictures of their daemons splashed on the front of every magazine rack in lit-up colour, which, _fuck._ Just remembering the grotesque shock of the grainy shots makes Harry want to bundle Seda up into his chest so that no one can get at her ever again. Harry imagines absorbing Seda into his ribcage: her paws tucked up against his lungs, small nose blocked by the iron press of his blood. 

Harry takes another mouthful of water and sprays it across the surface of the pool. Little drops catch the light and sparkle before they ripple through the film of water. His tongue tastes of nothing but salt. Seda says saltwater feels more like home than chlorine. 

“Soon,” Harry says, and he’s not sure if he’s lying. “I miss them too,” he says, and he knows he’s not. 

 

 

 

A lot of popstars have big, showy daemons. They’re allowed to be larger-than-life: sure, someone with a large daemon might have a hard time on the tube, but they look so great in a stadium. 

Kanye West has a proud lioness with shiny amber fur, so tall he can rest his hand on her shoulders when they walk. Nicki Minaj’s Burmese python twines about her shoulders like a shawl onstage and Taylor Swift carries her trumpeter swan down the red carpet so her sharp beak curls around her neck. 

On X-Factor, Harry had thought that the contestants with the flashy daemons would do the best, so he’d encouraged Seda to take her boldest shapes. That’s the way of things, isn’t it? Interesting daemons propel people forward. After all, no one with a bug daemon’s getting through X-Factor unless it’s, like, a praying mantis or a flesh-eating beetle or something. 

It turned out that the fans liked the boys best with their small, normal daemons. 

“You’re approachable,” Simon had said, his spider daemon perched on his right hand. “Marketable. That’s good.” 

Not long after that, Seda settled. “I don’t have the energy to switch back and forth anymore,” she’d admitted, a little worried that Harry would mind. 

Harry missed how she used to go furry and fluffy when he wanted a cuddle and then dart swift in the air when he needed to see what was going on, but no, he didn’t mind. It really was like people said. His daemon settled — a sea otter, mottled brown with big eyes — and everything seemed to slot into place. This is who he was. No one could make him any different. 

The only trouble was, now everyone else thought so too. 

 

 

 

Harry meets Pixie and Alexa at the Roosevelt Hotel pool on a bright Tuesday in January, a sentence that makes him appreciate Los Angeles all over again. It’s not quite warm enough to sunbathe so the girls are mostly covered up, but Harry can’t resist and strips off his skinny jeans to laze in the weak sun. 

Pixie reaches over Harry to get at the chips, her gecko daemon balancing carefully on her shoulder. His bright orange skin dappled with blue spots matches Pixie’s handbag exactly. “Are you going to Mossy’s party?” she asks, popping a few chips into her mouth. “Grim says it’s going to be one for the record books.” 

“G-word,” Alexa says, knocking Pixie’s knee. Her lemur daemon twines his striped tail around her forearm and sticks his little pink tongue out towards Pixie’s gecko. “Soz, Hazza. We know you’re sensitive.” She smiles in that way she does, like she’s teasing and not teasing at the exact same time. 

“No, it’s not… We haven’t fallen out or anything.” Seda climbs up onto Harry’s lap, draping herself over the towel that circles his waist. Harry pulls at her tiny folded ears a bit. “We just… Haven’t been talking that much lately. We’re both busy, I guess.” 

It wasn’t a conscious decision. The awful thing happened, and then the photographs through that cab window, and day after day cars waited right outside Harry’s front door. So Harry got on an airplane, and flew to Los Angeles, and he didn’t go back. 

But they’re still friends, aren’t they? They’d been friends before. Friends who sometimes snogged a bit, or slept together, or got photographed through a cab window with their daemons entwined like lovers, just… Friends, and now from across an ocean and an entire continent. 

Harry wants to say that they still talk, but sometimes talking to Nick makes Harry feel like his chest is an overfull wardrobe, like if he opens his mouth his whole body will split open and his insides will come tumbling out. It’s easier not to. 

“Mm-hm,” Pixie snorts, and takes another sip of her drink. Her gecko daemon climbs down her arm and whispers something to Alexa’s lemur, who snorts with laughter so hard he falls off the chair. 

Alexa’s eyes dance over her solemn mouth. “Remember our pact, Geldof. We’re Switzerland. We’ll let those idiots idiot themselves.” 

“Yeah, yeah. So are you, then? Mossy’s party?” 

Harry hasn’t decided yet. He got the invitation last week: gold stationary in a heavy envelope inviting Harry to Kate’s house in the Cotswalds. Harry’s never been, but Nick phoned him once from one of the downstairs toilets at about four in the morning, absolutely trashed and giggling about nothing in particular. 

“Maybe,” he says, and he thinks, _I can’t_. 

The day passes in a haze of fruity cocktails and weak sunlight, and people hardly bother Harry at all. The only ones who approach are sweet and just want a photo or an autograph. Seda stays safely behind Harry as they take quick selfies and then wander away. 

In the end, Harry doesn’t go to the party. He texts Kate happy birthday and then spends twenty minutes staring at his and Nick’s WhatsApp conversation before Seda forcibly takes his phone away from him. 

Harry’s picking at a quinoa salad thing for lunch when Nick texts him a funny picture of Ian and a series of martini glass emojis. 

God. Nick is halfway around the world but Harry feels like he’s still close enough to reach out and touch, like all the geography between them can dissolve into a series of zeros and ones. Harry’s heart expands like his mobile telephone, accessing the satellite desires from New York to Hong Kong. 

 

 

 

It’s the last show before a month long break and Harry’s hyped up, bounding around the stage with Seda at his heels. He nearly topples Niall over with the force of his bound but Niall manages to stay standing, looping an arm over Harry’s shoulders that Harry needs to stoop to fit under. 

“Where you headed after this, Haz?” he asks, tousling Harry’s curls. 

Niall’s kangaroo rat daemon climbs over Seda’s back to whisper something into the fold of her ear. The crowd roars accordingly: Harry knows without having to think about it that there will be photos and gifsets of their daemons all over tumblr in an hour or less. On the other side of the stage, Louis’s raccoon rides the back of Liam’s floppy Bernese mountain dog, which is sure to be another popular video. 

Harry shrugs one shoulder and pulls Niall in for a better cuddle. “Home.” 

“And where’s that, then? Cheshire? London? LA? Some private island with an old rich guy?” 

“Home is where everybody knows your name, Nialler,” Harry informs him. 

“So that’s… everywhere, then.” Niall snorts and shoves Harry off. Harry trips backward until his hands meet the stage and his bum follows with a sad thunk. Seda bounds over and snuffles into his face, patting her little paws over his chin, making sure he’s all in one piece as if she couldn’t already tell. 

“You faker,” she says, and Harry just snorts helplessly, the crowd roaring all around them. He loves this so much that for a giddy moment he forgets all the One Direction daemon analysis quizzes and the flash flare swarms in airports and the constant Photoshop manips — he shudders just thinking about them — of him and Louis touching each others’ daemons. 

Onstage it’s so easy to let the bad dissolve under the hot stage lights, to let the bright heat bathe him in blinding white until all he can feel is the feverish love of the fans and it’s good, it’s good, it’s what he wanted, it _is_. 

 

 

 

Harry goes to Los Angeles again. Gemma hops a plane and visits. “For the tanning,” she’d said breezily, but Harry knows that’s not the real reason. 

They spend the first day shopping in funny little boutiques and drinking smoothies with ingredients Harry doesn’t fully understand but pretends to, like flaxseed. Gemma makes the usual comments about the weather and it’s nice, really, because no one much bothers about them besides a few sweet girls who ask for selfies. 

In the evening they watch _Keeping Up With the Kardashians_ on Harry’s disgustingly posh sofa. Gemma’s painting her nails pale pink and Harry’s fairly sure he wants her to spill nail polish on the cushions. It’d be artistic and shit, maybe break up the monotony of the leather. 

Their daemons alternate between chasing each other around the floor and sitting quietly, Kudret grooming Seda with protective vigour and watching the Kardashians out of one amber eye. Gemma’s daemon weighs half as much as Harry’s, but he’s always been more intimidating without trying. There’s nothing intimidating about a goofy marine mammal, after all, no matter how sharp her claws are. 

Unlike Seda, Kudret settled early. Gemma was eleven and the only one in her class with a settled daemon. It hadn’t bothered her at all. 

“He’s a wildcat,” Gemma had said as Kudret bristled to twice his usual size, “Do _you_ want to cross us?” 

No one had. 

The Kardashians give way to an advert featuring a sporty young woman and her equally sporty terrier daemon running up a steep hill as the girl narrates about how glad she was that she chose Tampax Pearl for her athletic needs. 

Harry scrolls through his phone, idly flicking between Twitter and Instagram and WhatsApp, the latter of which has about a hundred and twenty-seven unread messages and stresses him out a bit, if he’s honest. Instagram is easier. Harry likes a funny picture of Lux and her daemon in dog form playing tag, Henry Holland’s latest jumper design and Gemma’s picture of their matching black trainers. 

The next picture is from Nick. Harry hovers his thumb over the image, right where Nick’s bright eyes stare up from the illuminated screen. His daemon’s white feathers skim the edge of the frame and set off the darkness of his hair. 

Harry always liked the look of Nick’s daemon, even before they met. He saw pictures of Nick in magazines with Eupoxia perched on his shoulder, her bright crest a double image of his quiff, her clever round eyes catching the light of the flash. Of course, Harry hadn’t known her name then. Not even gossip rags print the name of people’s daemons; the thought is too crass to contemplate. 

Or, it had been. Harry’s not sure how long that’ll last. 

All the fans know Seda’s name. They draw pictures of her entwined with Louis’s daemon and hold them up at shows. Jelany’s fur bristles when they see the drawings and Louis has to lay a hand on his back so he doesn’t go tearing through the crowd. Sugarscape does articles with titles like, “Is your daemon compatible with Harry’s?” and “What One Direction’s Daemons Say About Them”. 

On the Kardashians, the camera crew films their daemons wrestling with each other, chatting, grooming. There was an entire episode devoted to when Kylie’s daemon settled. 

Harry’s mum had gone a bit white at that episode description and then hummed, noncommittal. “Times change,” she’d said lightly, but Harry saw her clutch her badger daemon to her chest until he squawked in protest. She doesn’t watch the Kardashians with them anymore. 

Gemma throws a piece of popcorn at Harry’s head. “Excuse me, is this Harry moping time? Or is this Harry bonds with his sister by watching terrible reality shows time?” 

“Sorry,” Harry says, nudging Gemma’s knee with his foot. He likes the picture with a swift double tap and scrolls down. It’s done now. Harry wouldn’t think Nick would even notice, except he’s pretty sure he’s damned him to a couple thousand comments like _Harry liked this_!! Maybe that means Nick’ll text him. The last time Harry’d done that Nick had texted _omg tell harry i love him!!!_ along with about fifty prayer hand emojis. 

Gemma sighs. “As I was _saying_ , Khloe is my favourite Kardashian.” 

“Khloe is everybody’s favourite Kardashian,” Harry says, and then feels guilty, because he’d dated Kendall for a while. He doesn’t know if she technically counts as a Kardashian, though, so maybe it’s okay. 

They’re quiet for a minute, and then Gemma asks, still looking down at her pale pink nails, “Are you ever coming back to London, Haz?” 

Harry doesn’t answer. Onscreen, the camera pans to the tiled kitchen floor where Khloe’s marmoset daemon picks invisible bugs from Kourtney’s lizard. 

“You’re just cold-blooded, Kourt,” Khloe says offscreen, “That’s always your problem.” 

“You monkey bitch,” Kourtney says back, and they both laugh and laugh. 

 

 

 

Harry’s mum used to say that you could tell a lot about a person from whether their daemon was warm-blooded or cold-blooded. 

“Warm-blooded daemons mean they care about people, love,” she’d said, “Cold-blooded daemons mean they care about themselves. They take warmth. They don’t give it.”

Harry’s mum had a boyfriend with a reptile daemon once. He hadn’t been very nice. 

“Pick somebody warm-blooded to date,” she’d told him, after. 

Harry hadn’t known birds were warm-blooded at first, so he was a little nervous telling his mum anything about Nick, even though they weren’t really dating. He’d thought that since they’d descended from dinosaurs that they’d be cold-blooded, that they’d need to warm themselves in the sun like lizards. They don’t, though. Harry watched a David Attenborough thing on tour and he learned that for their sizes birds pump more blood than mammals pump in hearts larger than mammal hearts, and that blood is hot. The average temperature of a human is thirty-seven degrees Celsius. The average temperature of a cockatoo is forty-one. 

Sea otters need to eat thirty percent of their body weight every day to stay warm in the ocean. They don’t have protective blubber like other marine mammals, and fur can only be so thick. 

Zayn’s daemon is cold-blooded: a rainbow boa so gorgeous people stop to stare at her shimmering scales, and he’s one of the kindest people on the planet.

Harry doesn’t think blood means what his mum thinks it means. Harry likes to think about it like — like how Zayn is slow to warm up to people, sometimes, since he’s a bit shy and people tend to take people who look like him, or with daemons like he has, a bit wrong. Harry warms up to people right away. In the end, though, they’re both warm. It’s like that.  

 

 

 

In cartoons and comedy pieces, paparazzi usually have hulking vulture daemons. It’s a cliché, like thinking dog daemons mean you’re servile — servile, as if the Queen didn’t have a dog daemon herself — or an insect means you’re easy to squash. 

When they were dating, Taylor had made Harry watch _La Dolce Vida_ once and pointed out the actor with the fly daemon who played Paparazzo. “The word comes from the Italian for mosquito,” she’d told him, and now Harry can’t help but think of the buzzing every time he leaves LAX into a crowd of fans and paps. 

The men who follow Harry around London and Los Angeles with a fly cloud of black cameras have all kinds of daemons: ratty hyenas with hinged jaws and callous-skinned crocodiles, swift kites and glistening spotted frogs, forest green scorpions that cling to their shirts and yellow-eyed fish in portable tanks. 

 Still, amongst the motley group waiting outside the drive Harry can spot two sharp-beaked vulture daemons ruffling their wings on the hoods of nondescript cars. He feels almost like he’s in a movie. 

“We could get a restraining order, like the London one.” Seda’s whiskers tickle Harry’s chin and he can tell without looking at her that she’s eager to go back into the water and float in the sun. 

“Maybe,” says Harry, and chews on his lip. He’s been thinking about it — he can’t lie about that, especially not to Seda — but if he goes through with the whole process of finding out if it’s even possible he has to admit that it’s an issue. He doesn’t quite want to admit it’s an issue. Not yet. 

Jeff’s car pulls into the drive and Harry does his best to shield Seda from the flashing cameras without looking like he’s trying to hide her. 

“You’re a wanted man, Styles,” Jeff says.  

“Bet your arse. Does that make me Bonnie or Clyde?” 

“Neither, asshole. I’m a simple bystander.” 

“Enabler.” Harry manages a laugh, and doesn’t look back to check if they’re being followed. He knows they are. 

 

 

 

Harry goes to London in October for promo and can’t stop looking for Eupoxia’s white wings or Nick’s big smile, even though he knows he shouldn’t. 

Or, he _could_. They’re friends, aren’t they? They still talk. It’s just… different. Harry stares down at the banknote in his hand, trying not to think about much. The queen and her corgi daemon stare impassively up at him from the paper, limpid-eyed and stolid. 

“Just the green tea, then?” asks the girl behind the till. She beams at him. Her marmot daemon looks almost exactly like Radio 1 Breakfast’s Fiona’s, and Harry warms to her immediately. 

“A coffee, too,” Harry says, and takes the cups to go. 

In the end, Harry sees a couple fans camped out in front of Nick’s front door and he doesn’t stop, just drives and drives until the coffee goes cold. He types out _I’m sorry_ at a red light and then deletes it. 

 

 

 

“Cockatoos mate for life,” his mum had told Harry once. 

They were in London at some fancy event a few years back, and Nick was telling a funny story across the crowded room. People clustered around Nick in a different way than they did around Harry, maybe with more laughing. Nick’s daemon preened her glossy feathers. Her crest was up, golden in the light. 

Harry’s mum had smiled and taken Harry’s arm. “People think people with bird daemons are flighty. Don’t want to settle down, do they? But that’s not true at all. Birds build their own nests, and warm their young, and cockatoos mate for life.”

Across the room, Nick waved an elegant hand and beamed that big smile that Harry privately pretended was just for him. 

“Be careful,” his mum had said, waving back, and Harry’d flushed and felt guilty and annoyed and — protective, almost. Nick was, well, free as a bird. Wasn’t he? Nick didn’t need him like that. 

“I’m always careful,” he’d said back, and changed the subject. 

 

 

 

The House of Holland show starts in half an hour and people mill around, drifting towards their seats. A few of the front row seats have low partitions already set up, waiting for stars with large daemons. Harry doesn’t need to find his seat yet, so he weaves carefully through the loose clusters of people until he catches a glimpse of white wing and yellow crest. 

Leaning against the far wall, Nick scrolls through his phone and makes the occasional comment to  Eupoxia, perched on the shoulder of his smart suit jacket. Nick always gets tough shoulder-pads for his nice clothes so his daemon’s feet won’t tear up the fabric. He’s wearing his glasses and his hair is done up high.

Some part of Harry’s lungs caves in. 

Harry always forgets how gorgeous Nick can get when they haven’t seen each other in a while. He forgets how tall Nick is, how his legs go for miles and how glossy Eupoxia’s feathers are, how Nick’s glasses set off the warmth of his eyes and make Harry remember lazy mornings in bed and soft Sunday afternoons sprawled on the sofa watching bad telly, limbs all tangled up and their daemons curled together.

“Hi,” Harry says, and does his very best smile. 

“Harold,” Nick says back, the corners of his mouth feinting up. Eupoxia ruffles her feathers and smooths them down. 

Harry curls his toes up in his expensive boots. This is so — it shouldn’t be weird. This should be fine. They’re friends, aren’t they? This is what friends do. “So, uh. How are you? How have you been?” 

Eupoxia wings from Nick’s shoulder down to Seda’s level. “Hiya, stranger,” she says, and Harry can’t help but smile. She’s always been chattier than other daemons. It’s disconcerting at first — usually, only the daemons of your family or really close friends ever speak directly to you — but hardly anyone can resist Nick or Eupoxia’s silly face, cocked to the side as she eagerly awaits your answer. 

“Pox,” Nick says, like a sigh. His shoulders pull up towards his ears. “Pox, come on.” 

Eupoxia ignores him. Seda reaches a short paw at her and Eupoxia brushes her wing against it. Harry bites his lip hard. Fuck, he loves that flash flare feeling when his daemon touches someone else’s, the shivery gut wrench, and it’s so _good_ when it’s Nick’s. Seda’s paws comb through Eupoxia’s feathers in careful sweeps. 

Nick rubs at his forehead. “I — uh. God. This is what got us into trouble in the first place, Haz.” 

“Did it?” Harry’s distracted. Seda and Eupoxia are so close, their faces tucked together, and the tingling intimate jolt of it spreads from Harry’s toes to his bitten fingernails and he can’t keep one thought from another except for _finally, finally_. 

“You know it did. Pox, _please_.” 

There’s a rush of feathers as Eupoxia wrests herself away to settle on Nick’s shoulder and Harry pretends not to see the way she nips irritably at his ear. 

Seda jiggles like she’s trying to get dirt off her fur. All at once the room comes back into focus, like they’d been in a filmy bubble that somebody popped. Cameras click and voices caw and beckon and Harry smells too much perfume when someone bumps into him and then apologises, her hand lingering on Harry’s arm a beat too long. Once she leaves Harry holds his satchel open and Seda jumps into it, settling down. 

Nick’s eyes widen and one eyebrow lifts. “Trendy new accessory?” 

Blood rushes to Harry’s cheeks. “Guess so.” 

“Good. Especially what with the whole…” Nick waves his long hands around, simulating either a very lacklustre big fish little fish or a truly terrible mime in a box, “Crushing teen idol, crowd thing, and all that.” 

Harry puts a hand over the warm curve of Seda in the leather bag. “Yeah, suppose so.” 

Nick laughs a little, high-pitched like a helium balloon. “Jesus Christ Harold, normally making things less awkward is my actual _job,_ how is this going so poorly? You could help me out a bit here, arsehole.” 

Harry’s a bit busy wishing he could either touch Nick or teleport back to LA or fall into the earth never to be seen again, but not so much so that he doesn’t miss the opportunity for the sharp satisfaction that he might be _the exception_. Nick is so charming, and everyone always loves him, and god, Harry wants to be the one person he can’t handle. He wants that so badly. 

“No need to look so _smug_ , Harry Styles,” Nick says, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. This one reaches his eyes. 

“’S just my face,” Harry says, looking smug, probably. 

“Average face,” Nick says back, and Eupoxia wings from his shoulder to circle a little too close to Harry’s cheek. 

“Do you think we could —” 

“Harry.” Nick looks sad. “We should find our seats.” 

“Oh. Right.” Harry tugs Seda’s bag closer to him so that her warm weight presses against his hip. 

“If you — I mean, if you want, you could come by the flat later. I might have some people over.” Nick rearranges Eupoxia’s perch on his shoulder with fussy fingers and doesn’t meet his eyes. 

“I’d like that,” Harry says. 

After the show they pile into a cab with Alexa and Pixie — Harry carefully holding Seda far away from everyone else as they inch through the flashing photographers — and go to Nick’s for drinks and early nineties hip-hop. 

Everything feels like it had years ago, when Harry was just starting out and he’d spend weeks just hanging around Nick like Harry could absorb his toothy smile into his skin. They’d go out all night and have McDonalds in the morning, come home to fuck, and then Harry’d drive Nick to work and spend ages goofing off and distracting him. 

Seda used to hold Pox’s feet so she couldn’t fly up and tug down the mic Harry held away from Nick’s mouth. God, Harry missed them. Nick’s so… He’s so… 

“How’re you doing, Harold?” Pixie collapses onto the sofa next to him and props her feet up. “You look… focused.” 

“Just trying to, like. Remember everything?” Harry ducks his head, going a bit warm. Seda drapes over his lap and pulls his hand to her belly. He spreads his fingers out deep into her thick fur. 

“Sweet of you.” 

“I guess. Sorry, that was weird. Wasn’t it?” 

“A little, but I wouldn’t expect anything less, Harry Styles.” Pixie grins toothily at him. She’s never minded when Harry stared too long, or took too long to answer a question, or said something a little weird. Her daemon is cold-blooded. Harry’s more sure than ever that his mum’s theory is bullshit. 

Harry watches Nick dance with Ian, holding one arm out and making him duck and spin beneath it like a ballroom dancer. “Do you think he’ll let me stay over? I’m too drunk to get home, I think.” 

Pixie and her daemon blink at him in mild unison. “Honey, do you think he ever says no to you?” 

That shouldn’t make Harry happy. God, it shouldn’t, but it does. 

 

 

 

Harry wakes up in darkness and _knows_ , he _knows,_ he can _feel_ it. There’s a small thrill at first, a jolt of pleasure at the deep hot heart of himself, and it grows until Harry’s whole self feels cocooned in the submarine sink of _touch_. His whole body shivers. He eases his eyes open and waits, shapes slowly solidifying as his eyes adjust. 

The dark figure at the foot of the bed is Nick, frozen as Seda settles herself into his lap and noses at his hand. 

“I don’t —” Nick rasps, shoulders crowding up towards his ears.

Seda snuffles his fingers and sighs, “Stop overthinking.” 

Harry thinks that’s a rather ridiculous thing to say to Nick, like asking Eupoxia not to fly, and he’d say so but he can’t seem to breathe steadily enough to form words. It’s nothing like what used to happen in crowds, when fans would grope for Seda and Harry would double over, retching bile into the street. He can feel the warm touch of Nick’s hand in every tendril of his mind, of his body, of his — 

Eupoxia lands softly on Harry’s pillow. She looks down at him, and he looks up at her, and slowly — god, so slowly — she brushes the feathered edge of her wing across his cheek. Harry closes his eyes. Tears press up against the back of his eyeballs, hot and overwhelming, and he feels undone like someone’s trying to crack open that crowded cupboard in his chest filled with all the things he tries not to talk about. 

“Shh,” Eupoxia says, and brushes his wet cheeks with the softest feathers, “It’s all right. Shhh.” 

Nothing penetrates the stillness of the bedroom, just their breathing, and the sigh of traffic through the window. It doesn’t sound real. Harry can hardly believe there is anyone in the world left to drive the lorries or rev the motorbikes.

Harry must fall asleep soon after, although he hadn’t meant to. When he wakes again, the windows spill thin morning light over the duvet. Nick sleeps next to him, his arms folded over his chest and his mouth half-open. Eupoxia dozes on her perch next to the bed. She sleeps with her head tucked into her chest. 

Carefully Harry eases out of the bed, trying not to knock into anything as he reaches for his clothes. 

“Don’t,” Seda whispers, and her whiskers twitch in distress. 

“We have to go,” Harry says, and tugs his jeans up over his hips. “We have to.” 

“We _don’t_ have to.” 

“We do, Seda, _please_.” Harry’s so fucked up sometimes, Jesus, his voice cracks and he feels all shivery and strange and like if he doesn’t get on an airplane or into a car and get out he’s going to break into a thousand shards of whatever he used to be. Nick scares him. Nick scares him so much. Sometimes Harry thinks he’s really fucking Nick up. 

Seda looks fierce. “At least we need to say goodbye.” 

“I — oh, fuck.” Harry scrubs a hand over his face. If Nick wakes up, and looks at him and asks _what was last night_ , or _why have you been avoiding me_ , or _what’s wrong with you_ , Harry thinks he might crumble into bits. He doesn’t _know_ what was last night. He didn’t ask Seda to do that. He didn’t know Eupoxia’s wings would be so soft, or so gentle, or set his blood thrumming faster than a hummingbird’s heart. “I’ll write a note, okay?” 

Seda thunks her tail onto the duvet irritably but she climbs into Harry’s satchel as they collect their things and Harry writes a note.

  _Had to catch a flight. I’m sorry. I’ll call. Harry xx_

 

 

 

Harry isn’t expecting anyone. 

The knock sounds again, crisp, one-two-three. 

Harry mentally reviews the list of people who have the code to get in past the gate and the guest house in Los Angeles. There aren’t many: his mum, Gemma, Jeff, his publicist, the lads. He’d even given it to Nick once, when he bought the place. But Harry isn’t expecting anyone, and most of those people don’t even live in this time zone. 

“Maybe we forgot plans with someone.” 

Harry nudges Seda’s belly with his sock foot and drags himself off the sofa. “Maybe.” He slouches over to the door and peers around the side. Dark hair. White feathers. 

Harry kneels down to press his fingers into Seda’s thick fur for a moment, before straightening and opening the door. 

“Hi,” Nick says, and Harry stands very still in the doorway. “Thought I’d drop by.” 

“ _Thought he’d drop by_ ,” parrots Eupoxia, rolling her round eyes. “He spent about forty minutes having a conniption in front of your front door. I told him that that was _much_ creepier than just knocking, but does he listen? Never.” 

Harry swallows hard. “What are you — what are you doing here?” 

“I was… in the neighbourhood.” Nick twists his hair up with shaky hands. “Thought I’d see that mansion of yours, eh?” 

“We came to see you,” Eupoxia informs him, and Nick goes pink all along his ears. 

“Oh,” Harry says, his heart kicking at his ribcage. Nick stands in front of him, tall and freckled and kind-eyed, his long eyelashes sweeping sunlit shadows over his cheeks when he blinks and looks away. 

Seda shoves at Harry’s leg impatiently. “What he means is, come in.” 

“Oh. Right. Come in,” Harry says, and stands back to let Nick and Eupoxia and their suitcase through the doorway. 

Nick whistles low at the hardwood floors and the massive glass walls, the fancy pool table and the gleaming kitchen. Eupoxia seems to know exactly where the teabags are before Harry can get to the cupboard. She pulls two out and carries them to the centre island as Seda puts the kettle on. 

Harry and Nick stand still and look at each other. Harry doesn’t know what to do except hold onto the edge of the countertop and wait. “I thought you were going to Ibiza for your break.” 

“I was. I was, and then, I sort of… I sort of bought a different ticket.” 

“Oh.” 

The kettle switches off and Harry makes the tea. Seda’s annoyed with him: she keeps prodding at his legs and tilting her head at Nick and Eupoxia like, _say something_. He doesn’t say anything. He stirs milk and tries not to fall over. 

Eupoxia squawks and ruffles her feathers. “For fuck’s sake, Nick,” she says. “Why don’t you just tell him?” 

“I’m _getting_ to it, you harpy. Have to work up to it, don’t I? Confessions of… whatever… don’t just come out of nowhere. You need to emotionally torture yourself first.” Nick rolls his eyes and Harry cracks a grin, the taut moment easing back. 

“Well, hurry up. This is getting awkward.” 

Nick wrinkles his nose at his daemon and then takes a deep breath, spreading his fingers out over the countertop and looking down. “What Eupoxia _so rudely_ interrupted was… I came to see you. I missed you. We missed you. That’s all. That’s what I wanted to say.” Nick’s chin sets in a stubborn moue, like someone’s going to try to steal the words now he’s said them aloud. 

“We missed you, too,” Seda says quietly. Harry stands very still. 

“I get that things are difficult right now. And I wanted to come and say I get that. And I’ll do whatever, okay? I want to help. When you’re sad it makes _me_ sad and I hate being sad, it’s boring, and I just… I want to be with you. Not half-arsed like we’ve been doing. I want to, you know, properly. With the seeing each other. And stuff. It doesn’t have to be _now_ , just… eventually. I’d like to. If you want.”

“We’re not just friends,” Harry says, and Nick’s stubborn jaw eases into a rueful smile. 

“No, Hazza. We’re not just friends.” 

Eupoxia’s wheezy sigh ruffles Nick’s hair with its longevity. “They’re just getting that now,” she tells Seda, and Seda stifles a snort with her paw. 

“Okay.” Harry wraps his palms around his mug and lets the heat spread to the rest of his body. “Okay. Now what?” 

Nick shrugs. “Fuck if I know. You hungry?” 

Harry is. They order pizza, and watch the Kardashians, and Seda grooms Eupoxia’s feathers until she squawks and makes her stop pulling. They’re both doing a pretty good job of pretending they haven’t been thinking about kissing each other, Harry figures, but it’s gone on long enough. He straddles Nick’s lap and pins his wrists to the sofa and kisses him quiet. Nick tastes like tomato sauce and he opens so easy for Harry, soft as butter and pliable as new clay. 

“Take me to bed,” Nick says, his eyes shut, his hair a mess. 

Loose, ruffly feathers on a bird mean happiness. 

Harry can’t fix everything for Nick. He can’t make the pictures go away or stop the comments on the internet or mend the cloying way interviewers say, _so, your daemons seemed very close in that photograph, didn’t they_? Harry can’t do much, not really, but he can take Nick to bed, and not leave in the morning. He can do that. 

 

 

 

Harry’s heard the stories: in some worlds, humans have their souls on the inside. 

The theory is called the Multiverse, and it’s meant to explain those turn of the century tales of windows in the air that led to blue fields of unknown crops; or empty cities of steel and glass; or streets where humans walk alone, not as daemonless ghosts but as full men. The filmy layers of worlds are meant to run together, but no scholar can prove it anymore because the windows are gone now, and the only people who saw them are dead. 

Maybe in one of those worlds it doesn’t hurt like this, to have his soul splayed out in stark newsprint and sold. But maybe in that world everyone is lonelier. Maybe that Harry lies in his pool and drifts alone. Maybe he sinks and no one dives underwater to poke at his stomach and make him laugh. 

Harry sits on the bed and watches Nick through the window, the glow of his ember-red cigarette and the back of his head as he stares out over the patchy hills where drought-ridden California is getting some much-needed rain. The heavy drops don’t drench Nick, standing as he is under the balcony overhang, but his daemon flies out as far as she’s able. They say people with bird daemons have longer ranges than average but Harry doesn’t think Pox can make it far: she swings up and down just beyond Nick like a child’s toy on a string. 

“We’re going to be okay,” Seda tells him, her fur so warm under Harry’s fingers, and Harry nods. 

The rain beats down. Beyond the railing Eupoxia is all sodden down and chambered heart. The cut of her wings in the weather clenches Harry’s ribs right at the place he associates with Seda: the place his soul is anchored. 

“I know,” he says. “I know we will.” 

**Author's Note:**

> [Seda, a sea otter](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/Sea_otter_cropped.jpg)   
>  [Eupoxia, a sulphur-crested cockatoo](http://www.birdway.com.au/cacatuinae/sulphur_crested_cockatoo/source/image/sulphurcrestcockatoo00172.jpg)   
>  [Gemma’s European wildcat](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3l8GSkkS_eo/UGfwMNS-pGI/AAAAAAAAAxM/j78RHxE-Kn4/s400/Wildcat+European.jpg)   
>  [Zayn’s rainbow boa](http://www.primareptilia.com/gallery/26963-2/DSCN2328.jpg)   
>  [Niall’s kangaroo rat](http://www.redorbit.com/media/uploads/2012/04/Kangaroo-Rat.jpg)   
>  [Pixie’s tokay gecko](http://thefeaturedcreature.thefeaturedcreat.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/tokay_gecko2.jpg)   
>  [Alexa’s ring-tailed lemur](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Lemur_catta_001.jpg)


End file.
